Recently I was looking for a digicam to give to my son who's joined the cadets. The criteria was for something rugged, small and light.
Looking for rugged did not yield many options, notably two Olympus cameras and the Pentax W30 which I chose based on its non expanding lens, waterproofing and metal case.
Well, it's quite a disappointment, one must use the highest image quality and lowest ISO to get anything remotely comparable to a cell phone. And its AF is rather pathetic, particularly in low light.
Just in living room lighting the camera struggled, it was slightly better in Green Mode but the image quality was bad.
I dug out my Coolpix C990 and my G5 and they both toasted the Pentax in AF lock. And I thought things would have improved.
Good Morning,
My 2 cents worth ? If you're gonna take the time and research a camera's features, take the time and do a camera review as well. There are several web sites that review cameras, lenses, etc. I believe the Fuji F31 is great for indoor low light photography & has a very good build (dpreview.com). Hope that helps.
Have a good day,
Jim...
If I had the need (and the funds) to get a digicompact, it'd be the Fujifulm F31fd. It's the only digicompact that does a decent ISO 800, acceptable ISO 1600 and has ISO 3200 for those emergency snapshots. It's "only" 6 Mpixel, which is fine with me for the kind of shooting I'd use it for. It is the best digicompact for indoors and low-light.
And it has a few extra tricks for low light shooting: It can do double takes, one with flash and one with bumped ISO, so you can pick the best one afterwards. And when it does use flash it will hold back flash output in favor of pushing ISO a bit, giving much better balanced shots (instead of subject basking in light on a dark background.) The AF assist beam is a powerful one, so low-light AF works fine.
The downside? XD picture cards, but those aren't that expensive anymore.
